Your Right to Know

Scioto County has emerged from fiscal emergency after nearly five years.

Ohio Auditor Dave Yost released the southern Ohio county from the designation yesterday.

Yost joined county leaders and members of the state-appointed county Financial Planning and
Supervision Commission in Portsmouth, about 90 miles south of Columbus, for a final meeting that
ended the state of fiscal emergency.

Scioto County is only county in Ohio to have been placed in fiscal emergency. State Auditor Mary
Taylor issued the designation on Aug. 19, 2009, at a time when the county’s $15 million
general-fund budget had a $2.8 million deficit.

Twenty-three local governments and eight school districts statewide remain in fiscal emergency.
None are in central Ohio.

Scioto County leaders solved the budget crisis by cutting expenses. County employees went
without raises for four years and were required to take unpaid furlough days, vacancies were
unfilled or filled at lower pay, and the county’s bond debt was refinanced at a lower interest
rate, County Commissioner Vernal G. “Skip” Riffe III said.

The county also has begun leasing beds at its new jail, opened in 2006, to house inmates from
Pike and Lawrence counties. The leases are bringing nearly $300,000 annually into the general-fund
budget, he said.

The current $16.8 million general-fund budget pays about 175 employees, most from the sheriff’s
office and jail, and is in the black, Riffe said.

“Needless to say, it feels great” to climb out of the fiscal hole and be released from fiscal
emergency, he said.

“It’s Christmas Day in Scioto County.”

The state-appointed commission, which comprised state and county public officials, a local car
dealer, a union leader and a retired school superintendent, gave good advice and guidance, Riffe
said.

The state’s fiscal-distress system, which identifies and provides help to financially struggling
local governments and school districts, originated when Cleveland almost defaulted in 1979.

Yost complimented the county leaders. “Not without sacrifice, leadership dug in its heels to
bring a brighter financial future to Scioto County,” he said in a news release.